Author Archives: Mark Doliner

Old La Honda Is On Zwift This Month

There’s a hill that I loved to ride up when I lived in California. The road is Old La Honda in the Santa Cruz mountains west of Palo Alto. Here’s the Strava segment. It’s 2.98mi with 1,255ft elevation gain at … Continue reading

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I Bought a Bike Trainer

For the past 20 years I’ve biked or ran about once a week, usually on the weekend. But recently it’s been harder to make time for it. I think my weekends are busier than they used to be. So I … Continue reading

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Phone Mount vs Dedicated Bike Computer for Road Biking

I don’t know why they’re called computers. “Speedometer” seems like a more useful descriptor. Anyway. From 2003 to 2012 I used a super basic bike computer with just speed, distance, and maybe cadence. Very much like this one: From 2012 … Continue reading

Posted in All, Cycling | 6 Comments

Mastodon and ActivityPub

I’ve started using Mastodon. It’s an open alternative to Twitter. “Open” meaning there’s no central controlling entity. Tech-savvy people can run their own server and servers can talk to each other (referred to as federation). If you’re interested in joining … Continue reading

Posted in All, Computers | Leave a comment

Let’s Encrypt is Fantastic

Apparently I haven’t posted this anywhere so I just want to go on record: Let’s Encrypt is amazing and fantastic. In five years the percentage of web pages loaded by Firefox using HTTPS went from 30% to 80%. That’s huge! … Continue reading

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Using Salt to Manage Server Configuration

Background I’ve been using Salt (for clarity and searchability it’s also sometimes referred to as Salt Project or Salt Stack) to manage the configuration of my web server since 2014. It’s similar to Puppet, Chef (I guess they call it … Continue reading

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Firefox as a Snap package in Ubuntu 22.04

In Ubuntu 22.04 Firefox is installed from a Snap package and not a dpkg like most other things and the update experience is awful. I get this notification: However, closing Firefox and reopening it does not cause it to be … Continue reading

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NASA Deep Space Network (DSN)

A random thing I stumbled upon and thought was interesting: NASA runs a website where you can see the current send/receive status of each antenna in the DSN (Deep Space Network) as well as the spacecraft it’s communicating with. The … Continue reading

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